II.vii.156 (272,3) [Full of wise saws and modern instances] I am in doubt whether _modern_ is in this place used for absurd; the meaning seems to be, that the justice is full of _old_ sayings and _late_ examples. II.vii.167 (273,5) [Set down your venerable burden] Is it not likely that Shakespeare had in his mind this line of the Metamorphoses? --_Patremque Fert humeris_, venerabile onus _Cythereius heros_. II.vii.177 (274,5) [Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen] [W: art not sheen] I am afraid that no reader is satisfied with Dr. Warburton's emendation, however vigorously enforced; and it is indeed enforced with more art than truth. _Sheen_, i.e. _smiling, shining_. That _sheen_ signifies _shining_, is easily proved, but when or where did it signify _smiling_? yet _smiling_ gives the sense necessary in this place. Sir T. Banner's change is less uncouth, but too remote from the present text. For my part, I question whether the original line is not lost, and this substituted merely to fill up the measures and the rhyme. Yet even out of this line, by strong agitation may sense be elicited, and sense not unsuitable to the occasion. _Thou winter wind_, says the Duke, _thy rudeness gives the less pain_, as thou art not seen, _as thou art an enemy that dost not brave us with thy presence, and whose unkindness is therefore not aggravated by insult_. II.vii.187 (275,6) [Tho' thou the waters warp] To _warp_ was probably, in Shakespeare's time, a colloquial word, which conveyed no distant allusion to any thing else, physical or medicinal. To warp is to _turn_, and to _turn_ is to _change_; when milk is _changed_ by curdling, we now say, it is _turned_; when water is _changed_ or _turned_ by frost, Shakespeare says, it is _curdled_. To be _warp'd_ is only to be changed from its natural state. (1773) III.i.3 (276,7) [an absent argument] An _argument_ is used for the _contents_ of a book, thence Shakespeare considered it as meaning the _subject_, and then used it for _subject_ in yet another sense. III.i.18 (277,8) [Do this expediently] That is, _expeditiously_. III.ii.2 (277,9) [thrice-crowned queen of night] Alluding to the triple character of Proserpine, Cynthia, and Diana, given by some mythologists to the same Goddess, and comprised in these memorial lines: _Terret, lustrat, agit, Proserpina, Luna, Diana, Ima, superna, feras, sceptro, fuljore, sagittis._ III.ii.10 (277,1) [unexpressive] for _inexpressible_. III.ii.31 (278,2) [complain of good breeding] I am in doubt whether the custom of the language in Shakespeare's time did not authorise this mode of speech, and make _complain of good breeding_ the same with _complain_ of the want of _good_ breeding. In the last line of the Merchant of Venice we find that to _fear the keeping_ is to _fear the_ not _keeping_.